The "Poor" are, theologically, a sociological entity and a spiritual metaphor in the Bible. The poor of God refers to those who have entrusted their life to Him. It means the ones who have no other resources, nothing else upon which to lean or hope. Such people (also called the Meek, the Humble, the Lowly, and the Poor in Spirit) have ordered their lives in a hierarchy where God sits atop of all desires and goals. [brief detour: Saying God #1 in our lives, however, can lead to an error. How? We might think that making God #1 implies that there are #2, #3, #4, etc. This leads to thinking that we can divide up our day and give God the "best" or "largest slice" but then turn to other concerns. If God is my #1, what is #2? So I give God an hour and then thirty minutes, with no God reference, to something else which is #2. I would say breathing is a better analogy. Keeping myself alive is certainly something I spend much time and energy doing. Here is the mystery revealed. I continue to breathe even as I do other things. At work, I breathe. At play, I breathe. At prayer, I breathe. At study, I breathe. I don't take leave of the need to breathe in order to do other things. Breathing is on a different level than my "to do" list. And it co-exists with all of them. So it is with God.]
For the poor in spirit God is #1 means to say, "all I am, all I do, all I seek, all I celebrate, all I desire... is IN God." So I pray because God is my #1, but when I play, it is also in God. So nothing I do is outside of that relationship (which makes sinning so blasphemous. In sin, we reduce God to one value among many which, from time to time, can be set aside). The poor (in this spiritual sense) are the ones who recognize that every moment of every day hangs in the balance, and only God (ONLY God !) sustains it. So it is not an issue of balancing God with other values, it is an issue of submitting all values in and through our commitment to God. [The upside is we do not have to being doing "religious" stuff, or "spiritual" stuff, in order to be connecting with God] Family time, recreation time, eating and drinking, reading and relaxing can all be done in a spirit of thanksgiving and worship, without being overtly "religious." However, I would also argue that to pull it off, one needs to set aside times of actual and overt "religious practice/spirituality" so church attendance, Bible study and prayer are not optional. The old mantra from the 70's "my life is a prayer" can be true, but it is usually a delusion if your prayer life is not robust!
However, and this is vital, the Biblical concept of the Poor is not simply a spiritual insight or religious practice. The primary referent to the Poor in the Bible is a sociological and economic entity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, dirt eaters refers to a literal fact. The Poor eat "dirt" to fill their bellies. Recall the prodigal son parable in Luke. [If that is not a familiar story here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son ] The wayward youth was in a most disastrous situation for a Jewish boy--feeding pigs (unclean!) and desiring to fill his belly with pig food (ugh!) because he was so hungry. In America we often hear of people who pick through dumpsters to find a meal. And in the third world people not only eat garbage, they eat actual dirt to make the emptiness go away. The danger with middle class folks (who are never really hungry) talking about being 'poor in spirit' is that we seldom are (when we say "I need" we really mean "I want"). And the delusion of the term can blind us to the actual reality which Almighty God has revealed to us in the texts of the Ancient Covenant (OT) and the Covenant of Jesus (NT). If we spend time reading the Torah we will see that God's concern with the rightly ordered life includes what we call "social justice" and taking care of the poor. In Torah, the farmer is commanded to leave some behind in the fields so that the needy can gather grain. Intentionally inefficient harvests for the sake of the poor is a stunning reminder to us today about how to deal with the poor (and Democrats miss the boat here as badly as Republicans, or so it appears to me). It is a personal decision to give freely of what I have to another. It is generous. It is not a government mandate fueled by Powerful people who tax (i.e. take away by force) and then distribute for political gain (don't believe me, look at which groups vote for which candidates and see if self interest motivates the ballot box!).
The real poor of Jesus' day also figuratively ate dirt because they were downtrodden (the image of being walked all over is figurative for us, but quite literal in some times and places for real poor people). The poor and powerless literally lay face down on the ground. (The Greek word for worship means to fall on one's face.) It was an ancient practice of submission which people really did to humiliate themselves and declare that they were beneath someone of a higher status. That is what 'the poor' does in the presence of the "mighty." (And it is not something middle class Americans ever do, figuratively or literally, hence the limits of the concept as a spiritualized ideal) To "lick the dust" (a frequent Biblical turn of phrase) is not just a poetic image, it is an actual behavior which the real poor experience. Stripped of self value and denied access to the halls of power, the real poor live under no delusions that they matter to society. They know that they are expendable, that they have no rights, and that the insolence of lifting their faces from the ground will result in a beating, or worse. [Remember, Roman citizens were not crucified nor beaten without a trial (see Paul's complaint in Acts 22) because they had rights. Most people, however, were slaves or foreigners. Most people were poor; they were "dirt eaters."]
The salvation revealed in the Ancient Testament (read Amos and Isaiah) is usually concerned with justice. It is a world where all have access to the riches of the earth. Food, drink and a life of joy are available to all in God's Kingdom. And the picture is quite earthy, even in the New Covenant description. As I will preach today (twice), God (in Christ) does not call us to be "spiritual" alone. Nor does He call us to be "only" spiritual. [and I am a tireless advocate of the spiritual life and spiritual discipline] Being only spiritual is Gnostic (heresy, bad, deadly). Being religious is holistic (and holy, being both spiritual and material). Spiritual people do not bring good news to dirt eaters, they bring empty words ("hey, enjoy the sunset, hungry ones, and enjoy the knowledge that we have souls and like nature..."). To paraphrase James 1:27 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+1%3A27&version=ESV real religion is being uncorrupted by the value system of unredeemed humanity AND taking care of the truly needy and poor. It is about Holiness and Justice, two enterprises which are never completely achieved.
Jesus was probably poor, much poorer than we imagine. He had little social power or social status. That is why He was crucified. If one studies His preaching it is hard to understand what He said which led to the cross. It is because in our culture we vote, we have rights to say what we think. Jesus did not advocate anything criminal in our minds, so what was His crime? His crime was that He offered a different vision of society. He claimed a status for the dirt eaters which the Empire could not abide. He basically said the dirt eaters were fully human and children of God. Such radical thinking is at odds with "the world, the flesh and the devil" so it called down the wrath of the Principalities and Powers. But The Evil One (and, as Paul says, we live in 'this present darkness' under Its influence) is subtle. In our own more democratic times the disdain for the dirt eaters morphs and takes new forms. The impulse to oppress others remains, it is just dressed in garb which leads us to think our version of oppression is just and fair. In every age, in all places, the radical message of Jesus (about God's Kingdom as expressed in Torah and Prophets) is hard to hear, harder to understand, and hardest to embrace and incarnate. We are all victims, but we are also perpetrators. We are all poor, but poor is relative and relatively speaking, some are much poorer than others. Some are unbelievably, horribly, hopelessly, despisedly, broken and downtrodden, dirt eating poor. Jesus loves us all. Jesus also calls us to so much more. And unless we repent of our own blindness and sin (distorted by our politics, each in a unique way) we will continue, every day in a myriad of ways, to walk all over the dirt eaters and ignore their plight (or use it to our advantage in the name of justice or other high sounding phrase). And when Jesus comes back, He will not be pleased (no matter how spiritual we think we are).
No comments:
Post a Comment